Giving Your Best Stuff Away for Free is the Worst Way to Grow Your Business

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 295. Today we're breaking down why giving away your best stuff for free might be the worst way to grow your business. Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance in movement, package and position their products and services, and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast.

What's up, coach? Thank you so much for pushing play on another episode of the PT Profit Podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Simpson, and if this is your first time that you're hanging out with me today, welcome. I'm super pumped that you're here. So. So in this episode, I really wanted to break down why and how giving away your best stuff for free might actually be making the problem of growing profit worse. And here's why. Okay. And so, you know, recently, Alex Hormozi, who's incredible, he's. I love him, don't get me wrong. Like, I've read all of his books. I listen to all of his stuff. I think he's outstanding. But he recently, he said something that really piqued my, you know, my ear, just because I understood the context of what it is that he was saying. But so many people miss this, and they don't, which is that he was talking about how you make your free stuff better than people's paid stuff, and then you monetize another way. And he said it so off the cuff like, like, oh, yeah, you just make your free stuff so good that you, you know, monetize a different way. The reason why I feel like that sentence is so powerful and he's just said it so nonchalantly. I think people miss some really important components about how to strategically teach and give information without sacrificing your top line and bottom line. So what do I mean by that? I mean that people hear, oh, my gosh, I just got to give my best stuff away for free. And they start to internalize that. This feeling of like, oh, man, it's usually it comes from this heart centered. From a heart centered coach who really just got into this business because they wanted to help people. And so they start to feel like, oh, my gosh, I just need to help people, help people, help people. Then I'll be enough. Then I'll be enough. And I'll be able to, you know, accidentally ask for money, be like, okay, you know, what is it okay if I, you know, feed my family and then I can help more? But here's the bottom line. Even if you look at nonprofits, even if you look at charities, what is the number one thing that need to generate in order to help more people? They spend all their time fundraising because helping people requires resources, time, energy, effort, and money. So you cannot pour from an empty cup. You cannot help more people if you do not have revenue. So we have to really look at that, and we have to shift that perspective about what it means to help people. Because, remember, money is just an amplifier of who you already are. So if you think money is evil and you think that the only people who have money are awful and that are going to hurt people, then there's no way you're going to be generating. Your brain will not let you generate money regardless of how much you want to give. If you feel like any type of receiving is going to be worse, then. Then it doesn't matter how much you give, okay? That's number one. And then you won't be able to give to people for very long because you will not be able to feed your own family. You will not be able to take care of your own needs for very long. And then what's always very interesting to me is that people will say, I don't want to. I don't want to raise my prices. I don't want to because no one's going to buy it. I don't want to. I just want to help people. I don't want to come off sleazy or silly. And then I'm like, okay, great post. Every day, okay, let's go live. Let's blah, blah, blah. And then they don't want to do it, when really that's exactly what it takes to help people. So what you're telling me is that you both simultaneously don't want to help people by showing up for, you know, for free, and you also don't want to charge people. So we need to look at that, okay? And if that's coming up for you, then you need to look at it and we can look at it together, right? You don't have to figure this out on your own, but that's something that you need to look at. So here's what happens when we continue to just keep giving our best stuff away for free, okay? We, we. Most people end up falling into the pattern and habit of doing one or more of three things. Number one, you are running the risk. If you're constantly just giving your best stuff away for free, you're running the risk of sounding like the noise in the echo chamber of social media, meaning that your content is primarily educational, which is nothing wrong with that. It's very valuable and it's important. But how many of you raise your hand and can't? If I said, what's your favorite book? And you raise your hand, are you going to say the encyclopedia? No. If I said, what's your favorite website? Are you going to say Google? I mean, maybe, but likely not. If you're constantly educating, educating, educating, educating, you're running the risk of sounding like Charlie Brown's mom. And if that's you, hey, you're not alone. I'm like, okay. One of the hardest things for me is to really present and show my fun, creative side. Because when I'm teaching, I get so in the zone and focused and intense. And so there's a whole side of me that's funny, that's creative that I don't really show very often. And I'm in the process, 2024. I'm in the process of letting that come more, be more present, be more vibrant, bringing some of the fun components of me without sacrificing the educational component. But that's some. That's a part of me that can be shown that I can bring to the table without it being so intense all the time. Because when I'm teaching, I'm just very intense. So I bring that up. Because if that's how you are and all you're doing is just teach, teach, teach, teach, teach, then we are running the risk of sounding like the echo chamber of noise on the Internet. You have to ask yourself, what is separating me? What is putting me in the number one spot to be the number one go to person in your niche, the context of you, and we need to bring that in to every piece of content and component that you're creating that needs to come through. So if you are teaching all the time and you're not shifting perspective, you're not bringing in your context, and no one's going to hear it. And if no one's going to hear it, then you're not going to be in business for long. Okay, so that's number one. Number two, the other misconception that happens to people is when they are just giving away their best stuff away for free, it's usually in the context of feeling like selling is lazy. Sometimes it's in the context of feeling like, I just need to put up this really valuable piece, and then that'll be enough and people will love it. Well, here's what you run the risk of happening and doing. And if this is you, you're not alone, because this is me. When you run the risk of overwhelming your prospects. And overwhelm shows up in three ways. Overwhelm shows up when there's too much to do and not enough time in the day, like the to do list is too, and you got to figure out how to prioritize it. That can sometimes elicit an overwhelmed feeling. Overwhelmed also shows up when it's like, the to the to do list is so long, and I don't even know where to start. It's like, oh, my gosh, what is the next best thing for me to do? The third way is when people feel like the to do list is so long, don't know where to start, and they feel like they can't do it. And so when you become this wall of information of, like, you just gotta do this and this and this and this and this, then it starts to feel like Mount Everest, when the reality is you could be one post away from connecting with your dream client. So overloading people with information, that is the old way of transferring knowledge. We are in an information age. It's not. Information is abundant now. It's about really shifting through the contradictions and navigating implementation so that you can get to the desired outcome faster. That's what we're doing. So when you are pouring your best stuff away from people who are not running yet, that's like trying to teach a toddler who just learned how to walk how to run a marathon. And so I probably don't have to tell you how effective that is. And so when we're giving our clients and prospects a wall of information, it actually might be making the growth of your business worse. Because if people don't believe in themselves that they can do it, they're not gonna buy. And then the third reason why giving your best stuff away might be making the problem of business growth worse is because oftentimes if people walk away feeling like, oh, man, thanks, I'm gonna go try this on. I'm gonna. Then they go and do it, and then nothing happens or it doesn't work or whatever, then they start to feel disappointed. Like, oh, man, that doesn't work. That process doesn't work. Remember, the ladder of believability is believing you so that they see you, they believe in your offer, so they need to believe that your process, that the way you're programmed, that the way that you're doing things is what needs to happen. And if you give them so much to chunk to buy off that they feel like they can do it on their own and then they go try it out and they don't, they're not going to look. Oftentimes, not everyone, but oftentimes most people aren't like, oh man, how did I not show up here? No, oftentimes it's like, oh, this is why that didn't work. And so that could actually be preventing you from growing your business. And so what we really want to do when we're giving our best stuff away for free, because remember, give your information, give it. But we need to create the gap. And the gap is the problem. You solve it helping people, you're deepening that sense of like, oh, wow, this process works, this person works. Then you are exposing the next problem, demonstrating why people need your stuff. And it really also depends in the context of your periodized marketing plan, where you are in the macro micro cycle of content. What in the ecosystem of content, what are you trying to prioritize? It's like this, okay, number one, if you're trying to use this piece of content to make a case for taking the next step that I'm going to have a, which is DM me or come to my sales mechanism or buy this program. So if this is going to be an invite or implement week, then I'm going to write something that's like, but this is just the first win. When you join me live next week, I'll break down the other seven components or I'll use this call to action. That's if you want to learn more about how to implement this, then come to this next session, come to this, come to my dm, create a gap. If then, if this, then that, then the next thing I'm going to do is if I'm in a passive ask, meaning it's going to be more like, hey, if you like this, then you'll love that. Or this is a P.S. p.S. Still time to take this action. Sometimes the gap is going to be, hey, now that you've solved this problem, here's what the next people, this is what's next. So then you need to do this or the third thing that you can do is swift it. Now, I know I've talked about this a lot, but change the experience of how people are hearing the vehicle. So for example, you could listen to Taylor Swift stuff for free. Free but. But what's the experience of her paid concert event? It's a different experience. And then you add value to your paid stuff by speeding up the implementation process to get to the desired outcome faster. And when you can do that, and you could do it while managing expectations and effort and sacrifice on their, on their part and then also communicate through the resistance of yesterday, tomorrow, you and themselves. So I just went through the fear spectrum. Then you're going to be able to have this client. So it's not about hoarding information. We're not in an information age. It's about strategically empowering people with information and demonstrating the power of implementation, giving them wins and then positioning yourself as the go to expert to help them get to the result faster. And you could do that in your free stuff. It's not about hoarding information. There's almost 300 hours of info on this podcast that if you listen to it start to finish, you can, you can hit six figures, no problem if you implement it. And then if you can be able to measure performance and look for the blind spots and remove roadblocks, but that often that needs help. People need help. Nobody gets to seven figures in their business in a vacuum. So you need to share strategically. And if you need help with this, send me a DM at be simpsonfitness and I'll show you how you can give everything away for free and really deeply, truly help people and then grow your your income so that you can help more people and make a bigger impact. And that's how you can give your best stuff away for free without sacrificing your top line. Okay, great job here. If this episode helped you in any way, it takes two seconds to leave us five stars and maybe a quick review. This will help us help more people. Thanks so much for hanging out with me today. I'll catch you on the next episode.

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